From the Mission District to a Grammy Nomination: The 50-Year Odyssey of Dr. Alan Carlos Hernandez

NY Weekly Staff on October 23, 2026

When the Grammy nominations for Best Musical Album for Children were announced in 1996, one of the records on the list carried the writing of Alan Carlos Hernandez.

He had co-written the storyline and script for “Papa’s Dream,” an album by Los Lobos and Lalo Guerrero featuring the Children’s Coro of Los Cenzontles Musical Arts Center. The nomination came roughly two decades into a working life that began in the federal housing projects of San Francisco’s Mission District.

Born on May 31, 1952, to Puerto Rican-Hawaiian parents George and Rose Hernandez, he grew up surrounded by the rhythms of struggle and resilience. The projects were unforgiving. “The attitude is get rich or die trying, and many people choose to stay there,” Hernandez recalls.

His escape route was education and media. Inspired by his intellectually voracious brother, who would later serve as one of California’s highest-ranking Latino judges, Hernandez immersed himself in literature. While other kids read comic books, he was reading Dostoevsky.

In high school, he moved to the East Bay. By community college, he had joined the Brown Berets, a Chicano activist organization dedicated to protecting their community from police brutality.

“We had a problem,” Hernandez says bluntly. “The police were continuing to brutalize the people. We felt it was an obligation to protect the people.”

Hernandez came to a conclusion that redirected the rest of his working life. If the media did not show up to a protest, the protest did not happen.

That lesson moved his activism into the newsroom. He enrolled at Cal State Hayward and became Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Pioneer newspaper. In 1975, he graduated with a BA in Mass Communications, the first Latino to do so from that department.

His media career moved fast. He landed a weekend shift at KFRC San Francisco, a major rock station at the time, where he learned the mechanics of broadcasting and interviewed the biggest rock stars of the era.

By 1979, he was hired as Program Director of KBRG, a Spanish-language FM station. There was just one problem: he didn’t speak Spanish. “I was underqualified, but I could really interview well,” he laughs. Using the modern rock formats he learned at KFRC, he revolutionized the station. The gamble worked; Record World Magazine named him the International Latin Program Director of the Year in 1980.

But media wasn’t his only passion. In 1983, Hernandez pivoted to the record business, brokering a multi-million-dollar deal with Warner Brothers International to produce “No Quiero Mas Amar” for Little Joe Y La Familia. He traveled to Mexico City, signed the contract, and helped launch the group onto the international stage.

Then came 1996 and the Grammy nomination. Working alongside Los Lobos and Lalo Guerrero, Hernandez helped craft a children’s album that would become a landmark in Latin children’s music.

“We wanted to tell stories that kids could relate to,” he explains. “Music is universal. If it sounds good, it is good. If you’re playing it with passion, people will receive it.”

Fast forward to today, and the 74-year-old Hernandez is still making history. In 2022, he co-produced “Primitive Medicine Vol. 2” with Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Mike Carabello, a founding member of Santana. The EP featured Carlos Santana himself and blues harmonica legend Charlie Musselwhite, with future collaborations slated to include Journey’s Neal Schon.

Looking back from his home in Pacifica, California, where he lives with his wife Alba of 43 years, Hernandez talks less about the credits than about the habit behind them.

“Don’t come to the end of your life realizing that you lived somebody else’s life,” he advises. “I want my grandkids to look on Papa’s desk and see these records. Everything is possible if you put the work in.”

For a kid from the projects who couldn’t speak Spanish, Hernandez built an empire. That’s not luck. That’s a legacy of grit, talent, and an unshakeable belief in the power of his own story.

Barbara Blackmon on Her Legal Career, Education, and Contributions to Mississippi

NY Weekly Staff on October 23, 2026

By: Samantha Borcy

Barbara Blackmon earned her undergraduate degree from Jackson State University at nineteen years old. That fact, delivered casually in her biography, lands differently when you sit with it. Nineteen. Then an MBA from the University of Alabama. Then a law degree from the University of Mississippi. Then an LL.M. in taxation from New York University. Four degrees across four institutions of increasing demand, accumulated while Mississippi was still in the process of figuring out what to do with women like her.

She became the first Black woman to represent Madison, Yazoo, and Holmes counties in the Mississippi Senate from a majority-white district. That sentence contains three separate facts, each of which is significant, and their combination is remarkable. She won a race that nobody had won before in a constituency that had every demographic reason to send someone else.

Then she won the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor of Mississippi.

The Integrity That Eddie Briggs Remembered

Former Mississippi Lieutenant Governor Eddie Briggs, the first Republican to hold that office since Reconstruction, had a specific story to tell about Barbara that appears in the book’s early reviews. He appointed her Vice Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. When the Republican Chairman suffered a heart attack, Barbara became interim Chairman. Under her leadership, he said, the committee never missed a beat, even though she was a Democrat. “This kind of integrity,” he added, “almost never happens in today’s vehemently partisan legislatures.”

That observation from a Republican about a Democrat in Mississippi, in the era of vehement partisanship that Briggs is describing, is as close to a miracle as institutional praise gets. It also illustrates exactly what the book is arguing. Shared purpose is possible. Integrity crosses party lines. The machinery of division is real, but it is not the only machinery available.

Two Minds, One Purpose

Part of what makes Two Minds, One Rhythm distinctive is that it is written in two voices by two people whose purpose has always been the same. Barbara and Edward built a life, a statewide law practice, two legislative careers, and a family together, not by becoming one voice, but by putting two formidable minds to work on the same goals.

The book is built around that model because the Blackmons believe it scales. What two people can accomplish when they share a purpose is what a community, a legislature, a nation can accomplish. Not merger. Not the erasure of difference. Two minds moving in one rhythm, with neither mind disappearing.

What She Would Say to the Nation

Barbara’s path, from a nineteen-year-old Jackson State student to a senator from a majority-white district, happened inside the same system that was designed to make it impossible. That is the argument she is making in this book. The fractures in America are real. The machinery of division has deep roots. And people have moved through it before, with work and faith and education and the willingness to choose courage over the easier option of fear.

“The fractures can still be closed,” the book says. But not if we wait.

Two Minds, One Rhythm by Edward and Barbara Blackmon is available now! Order your autographed hardcover at twomindsonerhythm.com. You can also purchase the ebook or paperback on Amazon.

New AI Jobs Institute in Long Island City Aims to Give 40,000 New Yorkers AI Workforce Training by 2032

NY Weekly Staff 2 on October 23, 2026

The AI Jobs Institute, a new AI workforce training hub run by the nonprofit Pursuit in Long Island City, Queens, aims to train up to 40,000 New Yorkers for AI-related careers by 2032. Announced October 22, 2026, the project carries $10 million in public investment, with construction starting this winter and full occupancy expected in mid-2027.

Key Takeaways

  • Empire State Development is contributing $3.06 million, split between $1.5 million from its Office of Strategic Workforce Development and $1.56 million from the Regional Economic Development Council initiative.
  • The building will also house the New York Global Tech and Innovation Center, a Queens Borough President’s Office initiative aiming to help launch more than a dozen high-growth startups within five years.
  • Former U.S. Secretary of Education Dr. Miguel Cardona chairs the institute’s National Advisory Council.
  • Ascendium Education Group has committed a $4 million, three-year grant to build AI career pathways through the institute.
  • Pursuit separately serves as statewide lead for AI Prep for Jobs, a state initiative to train 420 low-income New Yorkers.
  • Enrollment dates, program length and participant costs for the AI Jobs Institute have not been announced.

AI Workforce Training Moves Into a Queens Hub Built Around Employers

The AI Jobs Institute is not being pitched as a classroom building. Pursuit, the Long Island City nonprofit that will design and operate it, describes four areas of work: training New Yorkers through AI-enabled career pathways, incubating pilots and tools with small businesses and nonprofits, producing data and recommendations for state and federal workforce policy, and convening employers, job seekers and industry partners under one roof.

That structure matters because AI workforce training has a timing problem. Employers are hiring for skills that barely existed a few years ago, and programs that take years to design tend to graduate people into roles that have already shifted. The state’s announcement frames the AI Jobs Institute as an attempt to prepare New Yorkers for jobs as they emerge rather than after the fact. Whether that promise holds will depend on how closely the curriculum tracks employer demand once the doors open.

Pursuit CEO Nick Simmons put the ambition plainly in the announcement: “New York has an opportunity to set the national standard for how AI creates opportunity.”

Entry-Level Tech Hiring Declines Raise the Stakes for AI Workforce Training

The AI Jobs Institute lands in a difficult market for people trying to break into technology. A 49 percent drop in entry-level tech job postings across New York City between 2022 and 2025 has narrowed the traditional first rung of the ladder, the junior roles where new workers once learned on the job.

That context gives the institute a sharper purpose than a general skills program. If fewer companies are hiring beginners to train internally, outside programs that pair instruction with direct employer connections become one of the few remaining on-ramps. New York State is also preparing a policy response. The FutureWorks Commission, which is studying AI’s effect on jobs, is scheduled to deliver its recommendations on training, job quality and support for workers by the end of December.

Pursuit Brings a Track Record With Low-Income New Yorkers

Pursuit has trained adults from low-income communities since 2012 and operates as both a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and a Public Benefit Corporation. According to the organization, its participants are 70 percent Black or Latine, 50 percent receiving public assistance, 60 percent without four-year degrees and 40 percent immigrants. Pursuit reports more than $1 billion in lifetime wage gains for program participants.

A Model Aimed at Workers Without Four-Year Degrees

For New Yorkers searching for how to get a job in AI without a degree, the Pursuit model is the relevant detail. Most of its participants enter without a bachelor’s degree, and the program is built around long-term employer partnerships and sustained support after training rather than credentials alone. The AI Jobs Institute is designed to apply that approach at a far larger scale, and the jump from Pursuit’s current cohorts to 40,000 trainees by 2032 is the number that will determine whether the model travels.

Global Tech and Innovation Center Adds a Startup Track in Long Island City

The AI Jobs Institute will share its building with the New York Global Tech and Innovation Center, an initiative of the Queens Borough President’s Office. The center is meant to connect underrepresented entrepreneurs with capital, corporate partnerships and global networks, drawing on Queens’ standing as one of the country’s most diverse communities. Its stated goal is to help launch more than a dozen high-growth startups over the next five years.

Pairing a jobs program with a startup center under one roof gives Long Island City two routes into the AI economy: one for workers seeking employment and one for founders building companies.

Funding, Advisory Council and Timeline for the AI Jobs Institute

The AI Jobs Institute is backed by $10 million in total public investment, including $3.06 million from Empire State Development. Ascendium Education Group has added a $4 million, three-year grant, and the effort is supported by a wider coalition of philanthropic, industry and civic partners, including the New York Jobs CEO Council and the Partnership Fund for New York City.

Dr. Miguel Cardona chairs the institute’s National Advisory Council. Its founding members include CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez and Tech:NYC CEO Julie Samuels, alongside leaders from workforce, education and finance organizations.

Construction on the AI Jobs Institute begins this winter, with full occupancy expected in mid-2027.

Enrollment Details for the AI Jobs Institute Have Not Been Released

Several practical questions remain open. The announcement did not include an application calendar, program length, eligibility rules or participant costs. Until Pursuit publishes those details, the 40,000 figure is a target rather than a commitment of seats. The next markers to watch are the FutureWorks Commission’s December recommendations and Pursuit’s first enrollment announcement for the Long Island City site.

FAQs

What is the AI Jobs Institute?

The AI Jobs Institute is a Long Island City workforce hub designed and operated by the nonprofit Pursuit. It aims to train up to 40,000 New Yorkers for AI-related careers by 2032, connect participants with employers and produce research to guide workforce policy.

When will the AI Jobs Institute open?

Construction begins in winter 2026, and full occupancy is expected in mid-2027. A specific opening date has not been announced.

Is the AI Jobs Institute accepting applications?

Not yet. Application dates, eligibility requirements and program costs have not been announced. Pursuit is expected to share enrollment details as the Long Island City site nears completion.

How do you get a job in AI without a degree?

Many entry routes into AI-related work now run through skills-based training programs paired with employer partnerships rather than four-year degrees. Pursuit, which operates the AI Jobs Institute, reports that 60 percent of its participants enter without a four-year degree.

How do you get a job in AI with no experience?

Accelerated training programs that combine instruction with direct employer connections are one common path for career changers. In New York, the state’s AI Prep for Jobs initiative, led by Pursuit, uses accelerated training to help 420 low-income residents move toward AI-related jobs.

Biofeedback Tools and Reinjury Risk in Physical Therapy

NY Weekly Staff on October 23, 2026

Patients should be discharged from physical therapy fully healed and ready to return to their lives or sport safely. But despite many physical therapists’ best efforts, under-rehabilitation remains a concern, and it isn’t uncommon for individuals to reinjure themselves after completing a course of physical therapy. Reinjury doesn’t just affect individuals physically. It also takes a mental toll and can keep patients from fully enjoying the activities they love.

To make informed decisions about when patients are cleared for activity, you need quantitative data. Unfortunately, many physical therapists don’t use the digital biofeedback devices and equipment that generate that data and help validate their discharge decisions.

Why Subjective Care Can Lead to Under-Rehabilitation

Among physical therapists, analog tools and testing methods remain common. Rather than tailoring rehab plans to individual benchmarks, many follow established protocols, use manual muscle testing (MMT), and adhere to general timelines. They often rely on patient self-reporting and estimation to guide treatment.

That relative lack of objectivity can leave underlying deficits hidden. Even if a patient says they are no longer in pain or they’ve completed a prescribed number of visits, those deficits may remain. When that under-rehabbed patient is cleared to resume training or return to their busy life, they may push their still-injured body harder than they should. Reinjury can send them back to physical therapy.

This demoralizing cycle of under-rehabilitation and reinjury can lead individuals to lose faith in the physical therapy process and make them fearful of leading active lives.

How Physical Therapists Can Use Quantitative Data to Validate Discharge Decisions

An objective approach to care that prioritizes quantitative data can help physical therapists make more informed decisions about when patients are ready for discharge.

Numbers give a clear starting point where a clinician might otherwise guess at a patient’s baseline. They show how far a patient has come, rather than leaving progress to estimation. Before a patient returns to activity, measurable results can help confirm whether deficits remain. Numerical data supports clinical confidence at each step of the physical therapy process.

What Data Do Biofeedback Devices Give Physical Therapists?

Biofeedback tools, including portable force plates, digital dynamometers, goniometers, and EMG sensors, give physical therapists numerical data on strength, balance, mobility, force, and muscle activity. Clinicians can use that data to build custom rehabilitation plans and inform their clinical decisions.

The data and reports these devices generate also give patients a way to see their progress during care. Many patients find visible progress motivating, which can support their participation in sessions and home programs. When discharge comes, the decision can rest on what the data shows, not only on whether the patient or the physical therapist thinks they are ready.

Disclaimer: This article is for general informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, physical therapy advice, or treatment recommendations. Biofeedback devices and other assessment tools may provide useful measurements, but their use and interpretation depend on the individual patient and the judgment of a qualified healthcare professional. Rehabilitation and return-to-activity decisions should be made by an appropriately licensed healthcare provider based on the patient’s condition, progress, and individual circumstances. Results and outcomes may vary.

New Novel “Those Kept Close” Follows Two Portland Families From Immigrant Roots to the Halls of Congress

NY Weekly Staff on October 23, 2026

Debut novelist and longtime Washington insider Stan Turesky launches a multi-book saga with the story of Peyton Fox, Portland golden boy, Navy SEAL, and reluctant candidate for Congress

PORTLAND, Maine (July 21, 2026). Debut novelist Stan Turesky, whose career has taken him through the corridors of the Maine State Legislature, the U.S. House and Senate, and Washington’s lobbying world, draws on decades of firsthand political experience for “Those Kept Close: The Life and Times of Peyton Fox,” the first installment of a planned multi-book saga.

The novel opens generations before its central character is born, tracing one Portland family from the arrival of a young Irish immigrant, Alice Sullivan, through the decades that follow, as her descendants build lives, careers, and complicated loyalties between Maine and the nation’s capital. That inheritance, of ambition, sacrifice, and unspoken expectation, lands squarely on the shoulders of Peyton Fox.

Growing up on the Portland waterfront, Peyton is the kind of kid other parents point to: a star quarterback and honor-roll student who also happens to have a singing voice good enough to steal a high school stage. But adolescence tests him just as hard as it rewards him. A sophomore-year injury ends his football career and pushes him toward the chorus instead of the debate team; his first serious romance is shadowed by a friend’s family tragedy, and looming over all of it is a quieter pressure: three generations of Navy men, including his own father, an admiral, expect him to follow the family’s uniform into service.

He does. The Naval Academy leads to a commission, and the commission leads to nearly a decade as an officer and a Navy SEAL, a career capped by a covert, high-stakes overseas mission that goes badly wrong. Fox survives, but not without cost: serious combat wounds, a citation for valor, and a stretch of trauma-driven amnesia that forces him to relearn pieces of his own past before he can move forward with it.

Reorganizing his life back in Portland, Fox resigns his commission, earns his law degree, and rebuilds himself as a civilian, a working attorney, a rekindled romance with his high school girlfriend, and, for the first time since he was a teenager, a life that belongs to him rather than to family tradition. It doesn’t last. When the ailing congressman who has represented the district for years is diagnosed with cancer and asks Fox directly to seek his seat, old ties resurface fast: his sister and brother-in-law’s Washington connections, his grandfather’s law partners, and a hometown network that has been quietly watching him his whole life. Within a single election cycle, the man who tried to leave politics behind becomes a freshman member of Congress.

“Those Kept Close” is as much about the private cost of public service as it is about the public life itself, what a family asks of its most capable member, and what that member has to give up and gain to answer the call. Turesky, who has spent his career on the inside of both congressional offices and campaign war rooms, brings an insider’s eye to Fox’s transformation from athlete to warrior to lawyer to legislator, without losing sight of the Portland streets, the Casco Bay waterfront, and the tight-knit community that shaped him.

Book One closes with Fox newly sworn in and Washington still mostly a mystery to him. Subsequent volumes will follow his rise through the House and Senate and, ultimately, into the White House, continuing the multi-generational story of a Portland family whose reach extends from Munjoy Hill to the halls of the Capitol.

About the Author

Stan Turesky has been engaged in government affairs since high school in Portland, Maine, where he grew up on Munjoy Hill. He began his career as a college intern in the Maine State Legislature’s research office and worked on political campaigns throughout high school, college, and graduate school. He earned a doctorate in political science from Brown University, where his dissertation examined the evolving role of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from the chairmanship of Henry Cabot Lodge to that of J. William Fulbright.

Turesky went on to hold senior positions in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. His extensive career as a Washington lobbyist has included assignments for federal agencies, museums, corporations, trade associations, foreign governments, and nonprofit organizations. “Those Kept Close” draws on that decades-long vantage point inside the American government to tell the story of a family and a country navigating the personal costs of public service.

He and his wife, Gerry Otremba, divide their time between rural Maryland and Washington, D.C. “Those Kept Close: The Life and Times of Peyton Fox” is his debut novel and the first book in a planned series.

Book Information

Title: Those Kept Close: The Life and Times of Peyton Fox

Author: Stan Turesky

Format: Ebook, Paperback, and Hardcover

Media Contact:

Stan Turesky

(202) 615-8513
sfturesky@gmail.com

The Utility Player, Alexandra DeBenedictis Has Built a Criminal Defense Career from the Ground Up

NY Weekly Staff on October 23, 2026

By Jeremy Murphy

At Aidala, Bertuna & Kamins, P.C., Alexandra DeBenedictis plays an invaluable role: the attorney who can step into any situation and move the case forward.

An associate attorney focusing on criminal defense, DeBenedictis works on appeals, civil litigation, family matters, and alternative dispute resolution. In her own words, she is “the utility person” in an office where no two days look the same. “I’m a jack of all trades,” she says.

At just 26, DeBenedictis is one of the youngest attorneys at the firm and the first associate hired directly from law school. Before becoming an attorney, she spent three years there as a paralegal learning the ropes from the inside. That experience gave her something law school alone rarely can: a real-time understanding of what happens when clients and families arrive in crisis. “The cases that are assigned directly to me are predominantly criminal defense,” she says. “And because I work directly with Arthur, any of the cases he’s handling, I’m touching.”

Learning the Firm from the Inside

Arthur Aidala, the firm’s managing partner, has shaped DeBenedictis’ early career. She reports directly to him, helps manage his matters, and has access to his email to help keep the team on track. “Arthur likes to say that I’m his left arm,” she says. “It’s incredible that the managing partner of the firm is my direct contact as a young attorney.”

DeBenedictis’ path here began during an internship. Because she already had an ABA paralegal certification, the role quickly evolved into something more hands-on. She became a constant presence in the office, helping wherever she was needed and proving she could handle responsibility. “I kept proving that I’m capable of doing what he needed,” she says. “Then when I stepped into the role of an attorney, it just kind of morphed into this.”

A Calling That Started Early

Photo Courtesy: Mark Grgurich (Alexandra DeBenedictis)

Since childhood, DeBenedictis has imagined becoming a lawyer. Her family noticed how she had an answer for everything and often wanted the last word. Her grandmother would tell her she had the perfect personality for the profession. “She would say, ‘You’re going to be a great lawyer one day,’” DeBenedictis recalls.

She never considered another path. At Quinnipiac University, she majored in political science and minored in legal studies. She went directly to Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law during the pandemic, spending her first year on Zoom from her childhood bedroom.

Her early interests were rooted in service. She initially planned to practice family law, hoping to make a direct impact on people’s lives. This desire was personal. Growing up, she watched her uncle use the legal system to secure services for her cousin, who is autistic and nonverbal. “The law is a mechanism for making change,” she says. “That’s the thing that sticks out to me.”

Law school allowed her to explore more opportunities. She interned at the Kings County District Attorney’s Office, assisting in domestic violence and elder abuse cases, and at a boutique matrimonial firm. She served as a judicial extern in the Westchester County Supreme Court and as a legal advocate at Legal Services NYC.

Finding Purpose in Criminal Defense

Eventually, criminal defense gave her the combination of urgency, purpose, and impact she was seeking. “Every time I was on a criminal case, I felt that same feeling I was craving,” she says. “My work was directly helping people.”

The pace can be relentless. One day may involve drafting filings or preparing for a scheduled court appearance. The next day she may drop everything when a client is arrested. A few months ago, DeBenedictis left her cousin’s baby shower to handle an arraignment. “It gives me the adrenaline rush that I need,” she says. “Every single day is a different day.” That high-pressure environment has accelerated her growth. Her first trial experience was unusual: she sat at the counsel table as part of the legal team during the Harvey Weinstein trial.

Growing Into the Advocate She Always Wanted to Be

For all the intensity, she describes the firm as deeply supportive. “It’s like a family,” she says. “They always lift me up.”

The most gratifying moments, she says, often come in quiet conversations with families. She frequently speaks with relatives, answering questions and helping them feel seen during frightening moments. “When I deal with mothers of boys around my age, I look at them and wonder what if that were my mother?” she says. “It feels rewarding to see that our work is helping them and their families.”

Looking ahead, DeBenedictis hopes to become a senior associate and keep growing into the advocate she has wanted to be since childhood. For now, she is exactly where she wants to be: in court, learning from one of New York’s most fearless litigation firms.

aidalalaw.com

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